The Manières de langage as Evidence for the Use of Spoken French within Fifteenth-Century England

Abstract

This article examines what a group of medieval conversation manuals designed to teach spoken French to the English-the manières de langage-can tell us about the use of spoken French within late medieval England. Beginning with the observation that several of the manières dialogues are set in England, it argues that the manières model the French required to interact with three groups of incoming French-speakers on English soil: travellers, merchants and artisans, and agricultural labourers. The approach pursued complements previous studies of the manières, including my own, which have established their fitness for preparing English learners of French to use French on the Continent. At the same time as the argument addresses the topics of French pedagogy and French acquisition in late medieval England, it thus also contributes to developing understandings of late medieval English multilingualism and of intercultural contact within late medieval England.

Research on Machine Learning-Based Error Correction Algorithm for Spoken French

“…As one of the six working languages of the United Nations, French is widely used in international social and diplomatic activities. It is not only the official language of France but also the official or common language of more than 40 countries and regions across five continents, with an estimated 120 million French speakers [3]. Although the number of French speakers in the world is small, the number of French-speaking countries is very big.…”

6 Locating Charles d’Orléans : In France, in England and Out of Europe

“…French remained current in England well into the fifteenth century and the porosity of the boundary between England and France was demonstrated by the persistence of an English settlement in Normandy that outlasted Charles's English imprisonment. 83 The desire to individuate England from the Continent ran alongside a desire to incorporate the Continent into England. I think that some of the tensions resulting from this contradiction can be felt in Charles's use of the word Europe in English ballade 35.…”